Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2234308" data-attributes="member: 4937">That's pretty much exactly what I'm saying.  I do believe that role playing fulfills needs that say chess or movies or novels does not, and that remains a niche hobby because only a small percentage of people strongly have the creative needs that D&D fulfills.  Which isn't to say that alot of people can't enjoy a role playing game, only that the hobby is driven not merely by the people who enjoy an occasional game but by its obsessive fans.   And we, by arguing this point, prove conclusively that we qualify in that category.To continue a previous analogy, I'm saying that D&D in 1980 was something like a 1920 airplane.  By comparison to the modern version, it was clunky, slow, had limited range, was fragile, and couldn't really carry alot of weight.  But it still fulfilled a need that people had, and it fulfilled it in a way that was wonderful and magical at the time.  When we gamers first say say the 1st edition Player's Handbook, we gawked like a bunch of rural farmers staring at our first flying machine.  It was amazing stuff the like of which we had never seen before.  The idea of an open ended fantasy simulation in which you'd take on the roles of fighters, wizards, clerics and rogues?  Amazing!  What a fantastic world that we live in!  I can go down into a hole, kill some orcs, and take thier treasure!!  Why its like being the star in your own book!  It's like playing cops and robbers and always knowing who shot who first!  I can make my own worlds and fill them with cities and people and histories!!  Sign me up!But that doesn't mean that the mechanics of the thing were solid at the time, and it took alot of work to keep it going.</blockquote>

Verification